Happy Purim! This week we practiced our commentary skills on the Purim story. Your creative and inquisitive kiddos came up with SO MANY excellent questions and inventive answers (more than twice as many as written in this post)! We are so impressed and proud. Check out your kiddos’ brilliance (and their goofy faces enjoying our Purim celebrations) below.
Part I: King Achashverosh has lots of parties. He wants to show off his queen Vashti, but she refuses. He decides to get himself a new queen and chooses Esther. Esther’s cousin Mordechai overhears two palace guards, Bigtan and Teresh, plotting to assassinate the king. He tells Esther, who tells the king, and the plot is foiled.
- Why did Bigtan and Teresh want to kill the king?
- They were tired of working for him and not being invited to his parties.
- The king was demanding and mean.
- Just because they wanted to.
- Maybe they thought he shouldn’t be in charge, that he wasn’t good at his job.
- The guards were just mean.
- They were mad that he banished Vashti. Also they know him as a showoff and didn’t like him very much.
- Why did Esther have to tell the king about the plot? Why doesn’t Mordechai do it himself?
- Maybe everybody knew that Mordechai is a Jew so the king would think it’s a trap if he went to the king himself. They didn’t know Esther was a Jew and she already had the king’s trust so the king was more likely to believe her.
Part II: Haman is Achashverosh’s chief advisor. Everyone is supposed to bow down to him when he walks by. Mordechai doesn’t, so Haman hates him and decides to kill him and all his people. He chooses Adar 13 as the deadly date. Mordechai tells Esther she has to intervene, so she invites Haman and the king to a banquet. The king asks her what she really wants, and she invites them to a second banquet.
- If Haman is such a bad guy, why would the king hire him as his chief advisor?
- Silly answer: Haman had bananas and Achashverosh loves bananas.
- Serious answer: Achashverosh was probably too dumb or to too drunk to notice.
- Why does Haman want everyone to bow?
- Because he’s the bad guy.
- To show that he’s in charge of people like the king is.
- Haman wants to feel happy, important, and proud.
- Why does Mordechai not want to bow?
- He doesn’t want to help Haman feel important and like a king because Haman is the bad guy.
- Because they don’t get along well.
- Because Haman isn’t the king.
- Since Mordechai is Jewish, he’s OK with thinking the king is important and in charge, but other than him, he only thinks that God is in charge. He didn’t want to bow down to Haman because it was like treating Haman like God.
- Does the king know about the conflict brewing between Mordechai and Haman?
- Silly answer: Yes, Achashverosh was watching it on TV.
- Serious answer: Probably not.
- How is Esther brave enough to eat with Haman?
- She is an adult.
- She is an adult.
Part III: Achashverosh realizes he never thanked Mordechai for saving his life. He asks Haman for advice, and then Haman has to parade Mordechai around the city in the king’s clothes. Haman is furious, but still goes to the second banquet with the king and Esther. There she reveals that he wants to kill her and her people. The king has Haman and his sons killed, and the Jews defend themselves against all the people trying to kill them. Now, we party.
- Why do they make a point of hanging (and naming) Haman’s 10 sons when we don’t hear about anything else they do in the story, but nothing seems to happen to his wife Zeresh? She’s the one who comes up with the special plan for killing Mordechai.
- Why do we say the son’s names in one breath?
- They were some of the bad guys, so we don’t want to waste air on them.
- Why is Haman killed on the gallows in his backyard?
- It’s a reversal – he planned to kill Mordechai on that tree.